1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information recording medium, such as an optical disc and a hard disk, and an information recording apparatus for and an information recording method of recording data onto such an information recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is known a technique in which management information for indicating a recording condition of the data in a recording area, i.e. whether or not the data is already recorded, is recorded onto a recording medium, such as the optical disc.
There is also known another technique in which it is detected whether or not the management information is updated even if the management information is not recorded onto the recording medium because of power shutdown or the like, for example, thereby preventing an inconsistency between the management information and the actual recording condition and improving reliability (e.g. Japanese Patent Application Laid Open NO. 07-44431).
However, according to the above-described technique, only the judgment of whether or not the management information about an entire recording area is updated to the newest information can be performed by detecting whether or not the management information is updated. Namely, it is impossible to judge or determine which management information in a physical or logical block (referred to as a “block” hereinafter if needed) indicated by a physical or logical address (referred to as an “address” hereinafter if needed) is not updated and thus is inconsistent with and does not correspond one-to-one with the actual recording condition. Thus, if the management information is not recorded onto the information recording medium, i.e. if the management information on the information recording medium is not updated to the newest information, because of the power shutdown or the like, it is necessary to verify or scan the entire recording area in some cases, for example, in order to update the management information, so that there is a possibility to take much time, which is a problem.